Simon Fry

Culture as grand theory in East Asian employment relations

Considerable emphasis has often been placed on cultural factors in explaining the peculiarities of East Asian employment relations. By comparison with workplace relations in the West, East Asian employment relations are characterized by low rates of unionization and collective bargaining, and a relative absence of industrial disputation. A critique of notions of culture found in employment-relations scholarship is presented which draws on long-established conceptualizations developed in historical, post-colonial, anthropological and cultural studies. Most of the peculiarities of East Asian workplace relations can be adequately accounted for through manners other than invoking a grand theory of culture.

Two discursive frameworks concerning ideology in Australian industrial relations

There are two discursive frameworks concerning ideology in Australian industrial relations. In many disciplines concerned with aspects of industrial relations, including political science, law and history, it is the traditional political ideologies of the industrial era which take centre stage: liberalism (classical, social and neoliberalism), socialism (Marxism, social democracy and labourism) and conservatism. By contrast, ideological issues in the discipline of employment relations are chiefly addressed in terms of Fox’s three analytical perspectives: unitarism, pluralism and radicalism. The disjunction between these parallel discourses goes largely unnoted in the literature of the relevant disciplines, which all tend to proceed using their own preferred approach without making reference to the other. This article critically explores the relationship between these two discourses and investigates the broader implications that the existence of the two different discursive traditions has for the analysis of industrial relations phenomena in Australia.

Industrial relations in Asian socialist-transition economies: China, Vietnam and Laos

Abstract This article compares developments in industrial relations in three Asian socialist-transition countries: China, Vietnam and Laos. Previous comparative studies of China and Vietnam have identified major commonalities between these two labour regimes both before and after the economic reforms undertaken since the 1980s. Some studies have also identified key differences between the two, to the extent that it is said that the two labour regimes are ‘on the road to divergence’. Others have suggested that the reform paths undertaken by China and Vietnam are fundamentally similar. This article argues that Laos shares many of the similarities of China and Vietnam, but that to the extent that China and Vietnam are taking different paths Laos is tending to follow the more conservative Chinese path with some unique characteristics of its own.